The John Casebook
by Englandwouldfall
Summary: Their somewhat complicated relationship didn't just fall out of the sky. No, there were the usual failures of communication and domestics and long, gruelling conversations about timings. There were slip ups and redefining positions and quite a lot of misplaced denial. And, as always, there was much to be deduced (and most of it wasn't until after the highly preventable arguments).
1. The case of the denied friendship I

I've recently introduced my flatmate to Sherlock (she needs to understand why I was crying at the thought of the next series being delayed, as this is the only time she's seen me cry - she offered me sweetcorn in an attempt to make me feel better) and so yesterday we watch the Blind Banker. I've always said that's my least favourite of the six (although I still love it), and I've come to the conclusion that it's because Sherlock and John are in a bad spot relationship wise. The main reason I'm so in love with the show is their beautiful soul-mate-meant-to-be-together-forever-in-what-ever-sense-of-the-words-you-like-friendship, yet throughout Blind Banker their both pushing each other and being mean and not as kind and understanding about the other as I've gotten used to. And because I could happily write novels about them just whenever, I decided to flesh out my head canon into actual words and post and what not. THIS is going to be lots of different important bits and piece of their relationship at moments when they've failed to understand things. SO THIS is set right after BB and will be going into what happened in that episode a loooottt. And now I will stop rambling on. Sorry about that.

* * *

**The case of the denied friendship, part one**

"Sherlock," John said, "I'm not arsing around about this – I'm looking at what that guy did to your neck."

"I'm fine," Sherlock returned, not looking at him. Partly, John was a bit concerned that the man had returned to the flat, fallen on the sofa and then _not moved _for over three hours, but then he was learning a dozen knew _Sherlock eccentricities _by the day and turning into a statue seemed be one of them. He guessed that demanding a proper look at Sherlock's neck was his way of transferring the mixture of incredulity and frustration that seemed to be directly correlated with his mad flatmate; he'd known moving in with him was hardly the most sensible decision he'd ever made (having shot a cabbie turned sponsored serial killer within about twenty four hours, then gone for a post-case Chinese he'd had to stop and think about how _ludicrous _the whole thing was), but apparently he was already somewhat emotional invested.

Particularly because Sherlock quite clearly didn't care about him all that much. He hadn't been holding out much hope for a beautiful relationship, really, given everyone he'd met had tried to warn him off and quite explicitly informed him that Sherlock did _not _have friends. But then, it seemed like he was the first person Sherlock had even _attempted _to talk to (and impress, because there was that; genius needs an audience and curing his limp and all that), and there'd been a sense of camaraderie and _hell _John had shot someone to save his life.

He turned into a _colleague _within ten minutes of meeting the man and that was just fine. He could be the bloke who got the shopping and argued with a chip and pin machine whilst his genius flatmate stole his laptop and managed to send them into the path of another serial killer. Yet again he'd been responsible for the man's death... but Sherlock had saved his life (and Sarah's) and the case was closed and that was that. Fine.

"If you're so fine," John said, still stood in the centre of the flat, "then why haven't you taken off your scarf?"

"John," Sherlock said, voice immediately slightly brighter (and all too sarcastic), "trying out paying attention, are we?"

"I might not be a genius," John said, taking another step forward towards Sherlock, "but you managed to hang your coat up fine." Sherlock remained virtually unresponsive, staring up at him; sulking. "God's sake," John muttered, untying Sherlock's scarf himself and dropping it on the sofa next to Sherlock with a grimace, "either you let me look at it, or I'm taking you to see a Doctor."

"You are a doctor."

"Nice observation," John said, "now can you stop pouting at the wall so I can check this out?" Sherlock made a noise of discontent but lifted his chin slightly. "Sherlock, this shouldn't have bruised so quickly. Wouldn't have pinned you down as an apple."

"An apple?" Sherlock repeated.

"Right. Med student term – people who bruise easily or quickly."

"No."

"No?" John repeated, fingers touching the bruised area of his skin as the ghost of the earlier events seemed to settle back over him: Sherlock bursting in like that, and then Sarah, and being tied to that chair, and hearing her breathing and hearing Sherlock struggling to breathe and wondering what the hell he could _do._

"No."

"Non mind reader in the room," John said, "more information please."

"The bruising is from before."

"Before," John said, steadily, his right hand still touching Sherlock's throat, "who the hell sodding strangled you, Sherlock? Because I'm fairly sure you've been with me, continually, for several days straight and _I sure as hell _didn't strangle you. If it was that prick Sebastian then I swear -"

"- John," Sherlock interrupted, rolling his eyes, "it was our acrobat."

"What... at the circus?"

"Before."

"_Sherlock_."

"Soo Lin's flat."

John withdrew his fingers from Sherlock's throat and glared at him. "You mean to say, that whilst I was uselessly stood outside yelling into a letterbox, you were being _strangled _by a man who'd just killed two people and you didn't _think to mention it _to me, your Doctor flatmate?" Sherlock continued glaring at him. "What is with you and battling murders alone?"

"I suspect he went for the neck because he thought I would still be suffering."

"Maybe he just really liked your neck," John muttered, his expression softening slightly as he glanced at his mad flatmate, "well done though, Sherlock, managing to get yourself strangled twice in twenty four hours is quite the achievement. Jesus, you're a hazard."

"Will I live, Doctor?"

"Not if you keep leaving me locked outside of crime scenes."

"And my brother said it was poor social etiquette to bring acquaintances to crime scenes." Sherlock said, catching his eye for a split moment. John wasn't sure he was quite used to Sherlock's way of communicating just yet, but the fact that he'd just dropped from colleague to acquaintance was probably significant. "And now you're asking to be included."

"Well," John said and left it that. He was entirely sure that his _I thought we were partners _comment was likely to come out a lot more childish than he intended, and given the number of times he'd born witness for Sherlock destroying people with their deductions he didn't think he could take the backlash. _So you honestly believed that because I cured your psychosomatic limp that you were important to me? Do you realise how inconvenient it would be to have a limping flatmate catering after my every whim._

"Should I have informed you?"

"Yes," John said, "you should."

"Why? Because you're a Doctor? Because we're colleagues?"

"Right," John said, "and because I don't particularly want you to end up dead. Tea, Sherlock?"

"It hardly makes that much difference," Sherlock said, one of his hands drifting towards his neck (John knew that it must have hurt; the man wasn't actually capable of cutting off all human things, as much as he seemed to be trying to do so).

"Whether you have tea or not?"

"Whether I die or not."

John thought that it was probably for the best to abandon any attempt at making tea immediately, because that... _that_. He didn't even know what to do with that. He didn't even know what to _say _to something like that and he was well aware that every little reaction – every muscle he tensed and slightly sharp breath – was being observed and catalogued. He definitely hadn't got used to Sherlock dissecting him yet.

That was the thing about Sherlock. He could work you out with just a glance and, in that glance, you were the most important thing in the world; an intricate puzzle to be taken apart and deduced and committed to memory. And then he'd take your whole life story and everything you laid bare for people to see, dismiss it as _dull _and _mundane _and work out just what button to press. He made you important and then he made sure you knew you weren't.

"Don't say things like that." John settled on, finally, stuck to the floor in the middle of their flat looking at Sherlock properly.

"It's a simple fact that one person's death rarely affects anything of much importance," Sherlock said, "Van Coon was having an affair with his secretary, who calmly helped me piece together some of his last hours without mentioning it."

"Is the morbid thing another case side effect?" John asked. "Like not eating and alone time with murders?"

"Just this case." Sherlock said, unresponsive again.

"What specifically, so I can be prepared for next time?"

"Next time," Sherlock repeated, quietly, before glancing up at him looking – if John didn't no better – almost _self conscious. _God, Sherlock was actually having a crisis right there and John didn't know what the hell he was supposed to do... I mean, he both hardly knew the man and felt like he'd known him all his life. He was so blindly overprotective over his _everything _and he wasn't even sure where it had come from or why he couldn't deny that Sherlock was _really _important and Sherlock was just..."specifically, Sebastian's involvement."

"He was a tosser," John said, shaking his head slightly. And then something horrific about the memory of that afternoon at the bank was beginning to resonate with him slightly; he'd been all het up about the chip and pin machine, and Sherlock not telling him anything, and Sherlock casually invading his privacy whilst not caring about anything that John did or didn't do, and worried about the bills and that – usually – when Sherlock wasn't listening it was because he didn't want to hear what John was saying, which meant that despite the fact that he'd killed a man to save his life Sherlock didn't want to lend him a tenner. Mostly, he'd been annoyed by how much he felt like a teenage girl getting upset about how little attention Sherlock had been paying to him – despite what his sister said it _wasn't _like that – when he'd known this was going to happen anyway. "God, were all your university friends such pricks?"

"Friend is a strong word," Sherlock muttered, "but unfortunately, yes."

John tried to picture Sherlock with a bunch of smarmy but slightly spotty posh kids and drew up a blank. Sherlock seemed to only fit in his personal memory of that first case – laughing with him about Afghanistan and haring about across London to _prove a point_.

And then he had a clearer memory of it all. _We hated him. He had this trick. _And John had acted _amused _by the whole thing, too used to Mrs Hudson and Lestrade making the odd '_oh look at Sherlock go' _comments and too bitter at Sherlock to notice the fact that Sebastian was quite clearly one of the biggest arseholes he'd ever met.

John was suddenly really quite pissed off all over again.

"How did you put up with that for three years?"

"I didn't," Sherlock said, "I dropped out to become a cocaine addict." That was a loud silence if ever John had heard one. "And then there was Soo Lin."

"Wait," John said, finally sitting down and actually looking at Sherlock, "back track a minute. I want to talk about the second bit too, but first we're going to talk about the cocaine thing."

"Really." Sherlock deadpanned.

"You bought it up," John said, "I'm assuming that means you _actually _want to talk about it."

"That's not what I want to talk about."

"Well then," John said, "what do you want to talk about?"

Sherlock let out and irritated sigh and then he was lying flat out on the sofa, staring at the upholstery. Normally, John had come to associate this sort of behaviour with days when Sherlock arsed about in his dressing gown but it looked even more ridiculous with him still in his suit.

"Work it out." Sherlock huffed into the sofa, arms wrapped around himself.

John was living with a genius toddler who appeared to be having some sort of emotional crisis. He briefly wondered whether he should tell Mycroft, but then came to the quick conclusion that there was virtually no vaguely emotional situation that could not become worse by adding Mycroft into the equation. Plus, for reasons unknown it seemed like it might be a bit like betrayal.

Back on for the tea then.

So Sherlock was... what? _Upset? Angry? _ Otherwise troubled by something or other that in some way related to Sebastian the tosser (although John had to admit he was feeling all of the previous the more he thought about the man, and wondered how he'd managed not to punch him in the face on sight).

John flicked on the kettle and tried to think back to something that might possibly help him _work it out. _The last couple of days were all just an unpleasant mess, really, because there'd been virtually no sleep and a hostage situation and Sherlock had been much more of an annoying dick than usual (possible side effect of Sebastian?).

Sherlock had been looking slightly _off _when he'd borrowed John's laptop – although what gave him the authority to read Sherlock's mood like that he wasn't sure, since he really hardly knew the man – and John supposed that must have been the email Sherlock mentioned from Sebastian.

But it can't have unsettled him that much, because they were off to the bank. It would explain why Sherlock refused to explain anything to him about _why _or _where_ they were going, leaving him once again out of the loop and a bit pissed off.

So, the meeting with Sebastian. That was why Sherlock had lied about the watch, then_. _And _we hated him _and _I dropped out to become a cocaine addict _and – _what do people usually say? Piss off_ – then _he's a psychopath and psychopath's get bored _and... Sherlock had been putting up with this for years and years and being _different _and hated.

John suspected that might explain the whole cocaine thing a bit.

Why the hell had Sherlock agreed to a case with such an unpleasant part of his history? The only reason he'd have dreamed seeing some of the more horrific people from secondary school was to shove the fact that he was an army doctor in their faces, or maybe to show off his nice wife and kids and this nice life that he'd built up (when he got round to the building), to show them that despite all their little _jibes _he turned out fine. And that hadn't even been that bad, really, just the few offhand mean things that were said about everyone in secondary school... nothing that would ever have driven him to _drugs._

John poured boiling water into two cups of tea.

To show off then. Sherlock was admittedly quite good at showing off, but he'd lied about the watch so obviously it wasn't his intellect (which, by the sounds of it, really hadn't been getting the audience it deserved before very recently) and it couldn't have been money. So, what then?

_This is my __friend__, John Watson._

First, John could feel the slightly needy teenage girl winning the battle over his primary emotions. He'd had an internal mantra of '_colleague, flatmate, personal slave, Sherlock doesn't have friends'_ running around his head for at least a week. Yet somehow, not being a genius and being in a bit of a shitty mood, John hadn't noticed he'd been upgraded to friend status. More than that, he'd been updated to friend status and then Sherlock had proceeded to use him to _boast _to a nasty rich banker who bullied him, which meant that Sherlock was _proud _that they were friends.

Sherlock had said himself; friend is a strong word, particularly to someone like Sherlock.

The second thought was _shit. _

And then he was angry. Partly at Sebastian for latching into the word and being such a bastard that he couldn't even let Sherlock have a _friend _after such a long time without openly mocking him about it, but mostly at himself for being such an unobservant and insensitive git.

Sherlock was right. He really was an idiot.

**Next chapter: Sherlock and John talk friendship! **


	2. The case of the denied friendship II

**The case of the denied friendship, part two**

John stared at his cup of tea wondering how on earth he was supposed to approach this. He had a self (mis)diagnosed sociopath sulking on the sofa, which was apparently his fault, two cups of tea in his hand and not even the faintest idea of what he was supposed to do about it.

What was the appropriate way to inform his flatmate that they were _actually _friends without the situation degrading to nursery school levels? What did he want? A sodding friendship bracelet? A request on facebook? A _hug_?

God. This certainly wasn't what he'd been expecting when he woke up this morning (well, not that morning really – he wasn't sure when he'd actually slept in the last few days, but it certainly hadn't been enough for him to be able to deal with this); being ignored a bit more, yes, criminals and crime syndicates and lots of taxi fares, but not the stark realisation that everyone had gotten Sherlock all wrong.

He had _thought _that on that first day, with all the running about and the laughing and the Chinese, but then he seemed to turn off the charm and let John turn into a resource rather than a person, when apparently Sherlock did, actually, think of him as a friend.

Probably his _only _friend.

And John had been the biggest _arse_ ever and humiliated Sherlock in front of some mean tosser.

John took a sip of tea and remained in the kitchen.

As far as social etiquette went, he didn't think any guidelines could possibly help with this god awful situation he'd landed himself in. He didn't want to walk back into their sitting room and announce that Sherlock was his _best friend ever _just in case that he'd gotten it wrong and Sherlock really didn't care about what he thought, along with the fact that he'd imagined the embarrassment it would cause both of them _might_ actually kill them. Sociopathic tendencies regardless, they were still both far too male and English for this to be a remotely comfortable situation.

(Likely, that was how the whole thing had come about anyway).

"Tea, Sherlock," John said, when he finally decided he'd spent far too long in the kitchen for it to be acceptable and that the longer he left re-entering the room the more awkward the situation was going to become.

"I thought I said I didn't want _tea." _Sherlock muttered into the sofa.

"No, actually, you said it didn't matter whether you were dead or not. Which, in my book, means you're being a melodramatic teenager and _definitely _need tea. Now budge up, would you? You're hogging the sofa."

"I'm –"

"- hogging the sofa, yes," John said, nudging Sherlock's back with his knee, "and you can hardly drink your tea if you're having a staring competition with the upholstery."

Sherlock, with his usual mad elegance, managed to sit up and glare at John in one movement. "I don't want _tea."_

"All right," John said,falling into the sofa next to him and flicking on the television, "no need to get upset about it." John hadn't got the slightest idea where he was going with this, but it seemed slightly better than standing in a different room worrying about it. "_Your neck,_ Sherlock. What's poor Molly going to ogle now?"

"I highly doubt they're permanent." Sherlock said, his voice clipped again. John thought that was probably a slight improvement on sulky-and-angry Sherlock, but he wasn't quite sure.

John benignly considered creating a Sherlock catalogue of expressions and behaviours and patterns so he couldn't actually pin down who the hell his flatmate was, and what were the signs he needed to watch out for that meant he needed to be told he was brilliant or had just been strangled. He had a feeling that it would be a life's work , though, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to dedicate his whole life to man who left him locked outside and crashed his dates.

Then again, the fact that he was even considering it was probably a bit weird.

"Hmmm," John commented, "well, at last you've got a Doctor on hand now."

"Do I?" Sherlock questioned; all his limbs and muscle still a little too tense, expression still fixed into something that made John want to give him a hug (if he wasn't Sherlock, who tended to rip people to pieces if they actually brushed past him on the tube).

"Yes," John took a cup of tea for strength, "so we should probably talk about what went wrong with this case," Sherlock looked somewhat dubious. "Seriously, Sherlock, I want to help you with your cases –as long as you want me too, obviously – and I want to continue living here, but we weren't... we haven't been very _nice _to each other these past couple of days."

"_Nice_?"

"And, for what I can see, it seems like a _massive _failure in communication."

"Please refrain from treating me as though – "

"- if you're going to say child," John interjected, "don't. You're the one sulking on the sofa." Sherlock's lips thinned slightly. "So, at the beginning I was irritated because I had to get the shopping on my own –"

"- and took exception to a self check out."

"They'll be an unexpected item in your bagging area if you don't let that go," John muttered, "but, yes, and then I came back and tried to ask you for money, which you ignored. _Now, _I see that's because you'd just got an email from that tosser-Sebastian and we're trying to decide whether or not to take his case. I get that, Sherlock, but at the time I thought you were just... disregarding me because I didn't matter, okay?" Sherlock was silent, but at least he wasn't being told to shut up – it was the little things, really. "So, we turn up at the bank, you're still not telling me anything, you didn't give me the heads up about Sebastian being a prick, so then...then, being the git_ I_ am, I... well, I didn't mean to be an idiot, Sherlock."

The lines of Sherlock's shoulders tightened slightly.

"So then, in reaction to me humiliating you, you keep me locked out of Van Coon's apartment, so then I sided a bit with Dimmock, and then you keep me out with Soo Lin... then you crash my date. So, we just keep irritating each other and pissing each other off, when it was all so unnecessary. I'm not saying you needed to give me an emotional breakdown of events... but if you'd just mentioned _a little _of what was going on – just eluded to it – then we could have... not worn each other out by punishing each other. Okay?"

"Hungry?" Sherlock questioned, eyes fixed back on John for a split second.

"Definitely," John said, "but no Chinese, thanks."

Sherlock almost smiled, some of the lines of tension melting away from his shoulders for a second.

0o0

Later, John pieced together a new blog post. The whole business involved trying to get a picture of Sherlock, which was a pain in the arse in itself, but he eventually managed it. Then he attached a picture of himself and of Sherlock, labelling one 'this is me' and 'this is my friend, Sherlock' for the sake of _never _being mistaken for that mad tosser again.

Next time John read the blog post, the 'friend' bit had mysterious disappeared.

_Message received, anyway._


End file.
